What the klouthttp://www.whattheklout.com
The Unofficial Klout BlogTue, 05 Aug 2014 17:01:56 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1Much Ado About Nothing. Nothing To Do About Klouthttp://www.whattheklout.com/ado-nothing-klout/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ado-nothing-klout
http://www.whattheklout.com/ado-nothing-klout/#commentsSun, 04 May 2014 08:55:55 +0000@gknutsonhttp://www.whattheklout.com/?p=771Usually I try to keep these posts about influence, more specifically online influence. Not today. This is all about shameless promotion of my company, one of our partners and

some awesome work we recently completed for the Seattle International Film Festival which opens tonight with a modern take on Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”.

Here’s

]]>http://www.whattheklout.com/ado-nothing-klout/feed/0Full House Klout Memes. Just Because.http://www.whattheklout.com/full-house-klout-memes-because/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=full-house-klout-memes-because
http://www.whattheklout.com/full-house-klout-memes-because/#commentsFri, 18 Apr 2014 06:01:16 +0000@gknutsonhttp://www.whattheklout.com/?p=648I grew up on Full House. As children every Friday night my brother and I feverishly tuned into ABC’s TGIF to catch the latest episode. Blake also grew

http://www.whattheklout.com/se/feed/0Feel Good Klout Perk with a Flawhttp://www.whattheklout.com/763/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=763
http://www.whattheklout.com/763/#commentsTue, 14 May 2013 23:33:46 +0000@gknutsonhttp://www.whattheklout.com/?p=763Last week I got an email from Klout offering me a Perk from American Airlines. Nice, I thought. Free anything from an airline would be pretty sweet. The offer was a free one-day pass to the American Airlines Admirals Club® Lounge. Not bad I thought again. It’s no free round trip ticket to Paris, but who am I fooling, I’m not that influential.

I spend a lot of time flying between Seattle and Portland for business, so after collecting my perk in the form of a downloadable coupon I excitedly took to http://www.aa.com/ to see if I could use the voucher at either of my regular airports. While there are 37 Admirals Club locations worldwide, neither of which are in one of my most traveled cities.

While I enjoyed getting the Perk, I wont enjoy using it. Because I probably wont get the opportunity. If I were American Airlines or Klout, in this case I would have geotargeted the Perk to people residing in cities where the one-day passes are accepted, or perhaps to people influential in those

]]>http://www.whattheklout.com/763/feed/0Making A Movie, Doing Good With Influencehttp://www.whattheklout.com/making-movie-good-influence/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=making-movie-good-influence
http://www.whattheklout.com/making-movie-good-influence/#commentsTue, 14 May 2013 14:11:43 +0000@gknutsonhttp://www.whattheklout.com/?p=760Influence. Everybody’s got it, but in varying strengths and reach.

Bill Clinton = a lot, and wide reaching.

My neighbor Randy = a little, and none over his wife.

Rush Limbaugh = too much, and with too many people!

When people with influence use it to help others beautiful things can happen — like in the instance of Free Throw, a documentary film by my employer WDCW.

Free Throw, now available free on Hulu was the brainchild and passion project of Court Crandall, Executive Creative Director and the “C” in WDCW. In this case Court used his well earned influence (as described in this TED Talk) to help raise the profile of deserving students from Compton High School who may have otherwise gone unnoticed.

To secure financing Court went to his friends, many of them influential in

Hollywood (he wrote the movie Old School, among other things) to raise the funds. Many calls, emails, power lunches and generous, generous people resulted in the movie being made, but more importantly some very smart kids with better GPAs than me got to go to college.

Now is your chance to do a little good this week. Watch this free film then do something nice

]]>http://www.whattheklout.com/making-movie-good-influence/feed/0Original “Mad Man” on Leaving Madison Avenuehttp://www.whattheklout.com/mad-men-lester-wunderman/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mad-men-lester-wunderman
http://www.whattheklout.com/mad-men-lester-wunderman/#commentsThu, 02 May 2013 23:51:57 +0000@gknutsonhttp://www.whattheklout.com/?p=740One of my professional heroes, Lester Wunderman, father of direct marketing and all around industry innovator is leaving Madison Avenue, but not the game. And not just him. The whole Young & Rubicam crew including Wunderman (my previous agency) and other WPP agencies just left the advertising mecca, Madison Avenue, for newer upscale digs at 3 Columbus Circle, just across the street form the Southernmost point of Central Park. Check out this video of Lester talking about the move, part one of a series about leaving their

1) I love that Red Bull sent a four-pack of full sized product instead of coupons, other types of discounts or sample size. If a brand is going to tell someone they are special, doing so with a %15 off coupon just doesn’t cut it.

2) This is the first perk that I’ve received (I think) that wasn’t Klout branded. The note mentions Klout but doesn’t come with the standard note from Klout founder, Joe Fernandez. Not good or bad, just an

]]>http://www.whattheklout.com/red-bull-klout-perk/feed/1The Sound of Silence is Worth Paying Forhttp://www.whattheklout.com/sound-silence-worth-paying/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sound-silence-worth-paying
http://www.whattheklout.com/sound-silence-worth-paying/#commentsSun, 11 Nov 2012 16:24:47 +0000@gknutsonhttp://www.whattheklout.com/?p=726It’s been a long time since my last post. Life has been busy. Life has been loud. September 13th marked the end of my nearly 6 years with Wunderman Seattle, a company I owe so much to and who rarely offered a dull moment. After taking off one business day I started at WDCW agency September 17th and was quickly introduced into a fury that is an advertising new business pitch (which we won!). As exciting as this can be, the long nights and working weekends leave little time to reflect, and thus little time for blogging.

Even vacations can leave little time for relaxation. I recently spent 3 nights vacationing in New York City. Nothing is relaxing about New York City. Not even a vacation and especially in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Now I find myself sitting on a couch, looking out over the calm waters of Orcas Island at the beautiful Rosario Resort. This is silence. This is relaxation. I like this. The only sounds I do hear are the crackling from a fireplace and the occasional rustling of leaves that come courtesy of an ocean fresh gust of wind. Interestingly enough, this little mansion turned resort was built as a result of Seattle millionaire shipbuilder Robert Moran’s terminal diagnosis. He was given two years to live. After retiring and moving to the island he lived another 40 years, and died at the age of 83. It turned out he was simply a victim of work related stress. Moran paid millions for silence and it saved

Coming off the recent political election with recent of money was spent on advertising and daily, polarized Facebook rants it’s been hard to escape and find silence, even on the internet. This is the first time I’ve managed to do it in a while.

Social media and other forms of digital marketing are becoming even more invasive that traditional advertising in my opinion. Maybe because I’ve come to expect television ads and billboards? Maybe because they TV ads have become a form of entertainment? What I know for sure is that constant email SPAM and unwanted offers clogging my social media timelines are getting tired. I applaud companies and services like Klout that don’t sell their customer data and don’t spam their lists. Bravo to you. Companies that provide value will get people to come to them for content, not the other way around.

This relaxing weekend was proof to me that people will pay for silence. I am right now. And as a marketer I’ll do my best to only provide consumers with messages that are relevant to them, not too often, and maybe sometimes not at all. In the words of the “turn off your damn cell phone” pre-movie messages – “ Silence is golden”. True that.

Microsoft’s Bing has recently announced a partnership deal and investment in Klout. A lot of people may be wondering why. Here is one explanation. Klout, like Bing and Google, tries to create some yardstick for authority. Each is looking to understand what is the most authoritative page, video, picture, news article, and yes, person, for any given topic.

I have written before about the way that search is evolving to include social sharing as a signal for search algorithms, but the problem is that currently, search engines seem to make the assumption that you trust your whole network equally as an authority on ALL topics. And this, simply, is not true. The point is that not everyone in my network is trusted by me equally on all subjects, and this is where Klout’s usefulness in search could come in – it could allow Microsoft to understand what topics any given user in a network is authoritative on (if famously inaccurate…), so when I search for a new TV, only the opinions of those in my network that post regularly and are deemed to be authoritative on TVs would be delivered to me, rather than my long lost cousin who just posted that there was “nothing good on TV”. The interesting part is that Klout stand to gain too – their understanding of influence / authority will be influenced by the search volume data they get from Bing, which will allow them to understand who is important, that does not have a lot of social activity.

For instance, Warren Buffett is not active in social media, but with Bing data, they can understand that he is still an important influencer, as people are searching for him by name. As such, Klout improves it’s scoring algorithm, as it accounts for people with real-world clout

For now, the Bing integration seems to be more focused on delivering those with “Klout” on topics overall, rather than specifically aiming at people within your network, but that, to me, is the next step that makes personalized social search really advantageous – although you probably want the ‘real’ experts too.

Bing should be able to deliver improved results – or at least give justification in the form of a Klout score – to their social authority selections. And Klout will reap the benefits of the treasure-trove of Bing data to better understand influence overall. Time will tell if Klout can tune their algorithm enough to be effective at delivering the authoritative person on a topic in each network, but for now, it seems like an interesting partnership with the ability to improve both products – hey, isn’t that what partnership is all about?

]]>http://www.whattheklout.com/klout-bing-kling/feed/0Get a Raise at #SXSWhttp://www.whattheklout.com/raise-sxsw/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=raise-sxsw
http://www.whattheklout.com/raise-sxsw/#commentsThu, 16 Aug 2012 03:57:16 +0000@gknutsonhttp://www.whattheklout.com/?p=691What? Ya. @abelmind and I are up for a speaking gig at the 2013 South by Southwest Interactive Conference. What about? Well, we’re planning to share some tips, tricks, and tactics to get you more visibility in your workplace and/or industry. Check out the SXSW Interactive Panel Picker and if you like what we’ve got to say, give us a vote. We’d truly appreciate it.